MEXICO CITY – Some 250 members of the AnimaNaturalis animal
rights group staged a protest half-naked and covered with fake blood against
bullfighting and to demand the prohibition of the practice in Mexico on the
esplanade of Mexico City’s Fine Arts Palace.

“Youths from all the states
of Mexico, half-naked, covered with blood and with ‘banderillas’ sticking in
them showed (on Saturday) with this demonstration the suffering that the bulls
are subjected to in the bullfights,” Leonora Esquivel, one of the leaders of the
organization in Mexico, said on Saturday.

The “banderillas” are the long
barbed darts bullfighters stick into the shoulder area of bulls to enrage and
tire them out. The protesters had the banderillas attached to their upper backs,
presumably with adhesive tape, for instance, not actually sticking into their
flesh.